My DSP committee on Monday night voted to delay making any recommendations to Council on the General DPA. Rather than recommend it go to the Minister for approval for Public Consultation the Committee wanted more time to understand the detail in the DPA.

The DSP committee is, as readers of this blog page would be aware, is a new committee with 4 new specialist independent members. At the very least these members wanted time to disseminate the detail. I believe the elected members on the committee wanted this too.

So while the DPA was work-shopped for elected members this was back (from memory) in 2012 so the information is new to them as well.

The committee therefore agreed to re-workshop the DPA and our next scheduled meeting will indeed be a workshop rather than a formal meeting to facilitate this. This will be on May 18.

There are a  multitude of recommendations in the report.

They include but are not limited to the following:

Laneway housing, which allows for ancillary housing on allotments of land without subdivision, public notice changes, complying and non-complying development review, car parking review with dispensations for various concessions, shop/office floor area review, advertising signage review, and facilitating the commercial adaption of buildings of heritage significance.

Each have some depth to them and more thought needs I suggest to be given before we confuse the public with them. Each have the potential to be significant in their own right and to impact the City, taking I would suggest some pressure off the high rise focus that we currently have.

It was good to see the input on the night by our independent members. I look forward to what they will be able to contribute when we start something new rather than address something that is well down the track. The Unley Central DPA which should be coming up soon will likely be that opportunity.